Neck Adjustment

[6Picker]

A friend asked me to do some work on her Fender acoustic guitar. The action is very high and from what I can tell this is mostly due to excessive relief in then neck. I can see this in two ways. 1) sighting down the neck with my eye at the body end of the guitar. It seems especially bowed at the low frets. 2) pushing down a string at the lowest and highest frets, and then pushing down at the 12th fret there is a good 1/16+ inch of travel.

I have loosened the strings and tightened the truss rod (clockwise) a couple times, probably a little more than a half rotation in total. It hasn't helped much.

Where should I go from here? Keep tightening on the truss rod? Let it sit with slack strings to give it time to straighten?

[clinchriver]

Originally Posted by 6Picker

A friend asked me to do some work on her Fender acoustic guitar. The action is very high and from what I can tell this is mostly due to excessive relief in then neck. I can see this in two ways. 1) sighting down the neck with my eye at the body end of the guitar. It seems especially bowed at the low frets. 2) pushing down a string at the lowest and highest frets, and then pushing down at the 12th fret there is a good 1/16+ inch of travel.

I have loosened the strings and tightened the truss rod (clockwise) a couple times, probably a little more than a half rotation in total. It hasn't helped much.

Where should I go from here? Keep tightening on the truss rod? Let it sit with slack strings to give it time to straighten?

Do you have tension on the truss rod? usually a quarter turn or less will take care of neck relief. My Tele which I played for years, action was getting a little high, when I adjusted the truss rod it took four complete turns to feel any tension, less than a quarter turn I was back in business.

[6Picker]

Originally Posted by clinchriver

Do you have tension on the truss rod? usually a quarter turn or less will take care of neck relief. My Tele which I played for years, action was getting a little high, when I adjusted the truss rod it took four complete turns to feel any tension, less than a quarter turn I was back in business.

Yes, there is a pretty good amount of tension when I turn it clockwise.

[Ned Milburn]

Originally Posted by 6Picker

A friend asked me to do some work on her Fender acoustic guitar. The action is very high and from what I can tell this is mostly due to excessive relief in then neck. I can see this in two ways. 1) sighting down the neck with my eye at the body end of the guitar. It seems especially bowed at the low frets. 2) pushing down a string at the lowest and highest frets, and then pushing down at the 12th fret there is a good 1/16+ inch of travel.

I have loosened the strings and tightened the truss rod (clockwise) a couple times, probably a little more than a half rotation in total. It hasn't helped much.

Where should I go from here? Keep tightening on the truss rod? Let it sit with slack strings to give it time to straighten?

To check your neck relief, you are on the right track but should fret the 1st and 12th or 13th frets. The fingerboard past the heel of the guitar, and fingerboard extension (on top of the upper bout) are unaffected by truss rod adjustments.

Straighten the neck until you have about a B or High E string's thickness of clearance (string above fret) at the most.